Long term, the company hopes that early detection will help
prevent epidemics and give the medical community more lead time
to prepare for them.

Specifically, what Microsoft scientists are trying to do is build
a better mosquito trap than those currently available. Current
traps were designed in the 1950s and 1960s and are notorious for
being expensive to maintain. They involve chemicals and
batteries, are cumbersome and indiscriminately collect insects,
leading to hours spent in the lab sorting out the mosquitos.

Microsoft’s new trap uses less energy by relying on lighter
batteries, and a sensor bait system that specifically picks out
and preserves mosquitos. If successful, it could save countless
hours of lab work by filtering mosquitoes from other insects as
it operates. A drone will fly the traps into and out of remote
areas, eliminating the need for teams to be sent in repeatedly to
maintain and collect the traps.

The initiative has been dubbed “Project Premonition” and will
involve Microsoft collaborating with academic partners across
multiple disciplines. The initial work will be announced at a
tech fair in Washington, DC on Wednesday. Researchers say the
project will take several years to complete and will require
autonomous drones, cutting-edge molecular biology and advanced
cloud-based data analysis.

“This is at least a five-year vision, no doubt about
it,” said Ethan Jackson, the Microsoft researcher heading up
Project Premonition, in a company statement. “But along the way, the
advances we make in each of these areas have a lot of value in
their own right.”

In addition to the better trap and drone, the project will use
advances in molecular biology and genetic sequencing to help
improve screening for multiple viruses, including ones that
haven’t been discovered. The data will be stored on cloud-based
databases with algorithms for evaluating which viruses could
present a threat to humans or animals that humans rely on.

Jackson said five years ago, the cost of such a system would have
been prohibitive.

Microsoft researchers say Project Premonition could eventually
allow health officials to get a head start on preventing
outbreaks of diseases like dengue fever or avian flu before they
occur. Oftentimes, health officials don’t find out about an
outbreak until people are already getting sick, as in the recent
outbreaks of Ebola and MERS. It often takes months before health
clinics are up and running, and developing a vaccine requires
months, or even years, of work.